/usr/libexec

[Russell Coker]

On Wednesday 11 May 2005 00:48, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> > >It was included in an old version of FHS at the urging of the BSD folks.
> > >  It seems to have added no value, so I guess it was removed; it
> > >definitely broke the lib/lib64 bit too.
> >
> > Why do you believe that it broke the lib/lib64 bit?
> >
> > AFAIK no-one has ever tested Postfix with parts of it running as 32bit
> > and parts running as 64bit.  Running it in such a manner seems likely to
> > expose the user to previously undiscovered bugs while not providing any
> > benefit that I can determine.
> >
> > If you wanted Postfix to load shared objects of different word sizes in
> > different sub-processes then you would have a challenging task to
> > determine which Postfix program loads which shared objects.
> >
> > Please give me an example of a program which has sub-processes that can
> > run with different word sizes.
>
> Who the **** is talking about Postfix?

Almost everyone involved in this discussion.

This entire discussion started on the SE Linux list concerning the details of 
Postfix policy.  I then started a discussion on the debian-devel list about 
trying to get some convergence between the different distributions for file 
locations for programs such as Postfix.  After the FHS issue was raised there 
I started a discussion here.  You apparently didn't visit the URL I cited for 
the discussion.

If you think that there's a better example of an application that uses libexec 
which we can use for this discussion then please let me know.

> That being said, my point was that there doesn't seem to be any 32/64
> separation for libexec, *and* it never made sense in the first place (it
> was only added for bug-compatibility with BSD), so that's presumably why
> it was removed.

If we have /usr/lib for 32bit SOs and /usr/lib64 for 64bit SOs, then it seems 
clear to me that programs which are part of Postfix which may be either 32bit 
or 64bit depending on which package is installed belong to neither category.  
Therefore another place such as /usr/libexec seems appropriate.

The Gentoo people want /usr/lib/postfix for 32bit compiles 
and /usr/lib64/postfix on 64bit compiles.  I believe that approach is totally 
wrong and that /usr/libexec/postfix (as used in Fedora) is the better option.  
If there's general agreement with that then we can move of requesting that 
the FHS be changed to make the Red Hat practice be a standard in this regard.

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/    Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page